Steven Spielberg Admits That it Was A “Mistake” Editing Guns Out Of ‘E.T.’

Back in 2002, the 20th anniversary version of Steven Spielberg’s “E.T.” digitally replaced the guns used by the federal agents with walkie-talkies. This was only a few years after the Columbine school shooting and Spielberg panicked.

Now, Spielberg is admitting that he made a mistake when he edited the guns out of his film. He regrets it. He’s also subtly calling for an end to revisionism when it comes to the old classics.

The Oscar-winning director revealed his thought during a master class at the Time 100 Summit:

“That was a mistake. I never should have done that. “E.T.” is a product of its era. No film should be revised based on the lenses we now are, either voluntarily, or being forced to peer through.”

E.T. was a film that I was sensitive to the fact that the federal agents were approaching kids with firearms exposed and I thought I would change the guns into walkie-talkies… Years went by and I changed my own views. I should have never messed with the archives of my own work, and I don’t recommend anyone do that.”

The key takeaway here is the shade that Spielberg is throwing at people who want certain older films, like “Gone With the Wind,” shunned from society for depictions that reflected the era in which they were made.

The reactionary times we live in are trying to negate whatever happened in the past. Instead of learning about it, and making sure the same mistakes don’t happen again — they are just trying to erase history.

Getting rid of the guns in “E.T.” was indeed a silly mistake on the part of Spielberg.

Spielberg managed to sneak the guns back into the 30th anniversary release, after Spielberg said that he had “realized what I had done was I had robbed people who loved E.T. of their memories of ‘E.T.'”